| Presence with others is at many dimensions of the universe. The presence of apparently absent persons is evident in the many ways that others keep them alive through pictures, songs, stories, jewelry, ceremonial services, letters, and so on. The purpose of this research was to advance nursing knowledge by gaining further understanding of the meaning of lingering presence in human experience through a human becoming interpretation of Brown's (1992) text, A Promise to Remember: The NAMES Project Book of Letters. The research was guided by Parse's human becoming theory. The human becoming hermeneutic method was the method of choice for interpreting the text to discover emergent meanings of lingering presence. The emergent meanings, the findings of this study, were: (a) A lingering presence surfaces in the cherished remembered which changes moment to moment as new experiences arise in the now and shed different light on the was and will be; (b) A lingering presence is lived in private ways, yet with others in a different connecting-separating; (c) A lingering presence is living with the familiar-unfamiliar in the now moment, while moving beyond with different possibilities. Using letters from those who lost a loved one to AIDS, the findings are discussed in relation to how they contribute to nursing knowledge about the phenomenon and the human becoming hermeneutic method. |
